August 21, 2011 Bulbul Bird Survey on Sunday morning in Chiang Mai to raise awareness of bird capture

On Sunday at 6:30 am we were picked up by Chintana for a day with the Lanna Bird Club to do a survey of the birds in Chiang Mai town, particularly the Red Whiskered Bulbul. The club has for several years been doing a survey because many of these birds, which have a lovely call, are captured and placed in cages to sing, and their numbers are going down. The club brought together almost a hundred people to spread around town to count the birds, and most are children between 10 and 18 years old, although some of the senior members of the club are in their 50's and older.  Several of the leaders were medical doctors who were involved in trying to raise consciousness of their communities to the plight of the birds.
The club met up at The Three Kings monument outside Chiang Mai Cultural Center (the museum) and divided up into 4 groups to tackle four areas of town.  Our group covered the nearby areas, so we did not need to get into a car or bus, but several of the teams left in a truck with the Lanna Bird Club sign on it and the project's logo "A Cage is Not a Home" showing a captured Bulbul being released from a cage, logo attached. We saw a number of the Redwhiskered Bulbuls as we walked around the areas of the old Buddhist temples, which were heavilly treed and therefore supported bird populations.

Our group with David on the left

Dr. Mung President of Lanna Club with his daughter

After we completed our survey, we came back to the Cultural Center for snacks with the kids and then programs started with educational discussions followed by a well-known artist starting the kids drawing about the Bulbuls on a canvas that was about 30 feet long and 6 feet high!  The picture will later be used to make a poster to raise awareness about not capturing wild birds that will be distributed throughout the city and Northern Thailand. All the others were Thai and the language used was of course Thai, but the people were very friendly and came over to say "Hello" to us and asked about our stay in Thailand, interest in birds, etc.  Chintana dropped us back at our building at about 11AM after a very interesting morning.

Red Whiskered Bulbul